Greenpeace UK blogs

So long, and thanks for all the inspiration

bex — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 13:25:47 +0000

Somehow, a harebrained idea born in the grim depths of last winter has inadvertently become a reality, and today is my last day of working for Greenpeace before I head off to cycle across Africa.

I'll be taking a lot with me from my three years in this ~~madhouse~~ highly effective campaigning organisation - not least a criminal record, a habit of lying to friends and family about my whereabouts (in the run up to direct actions), and an antisocial compulsion to explain the beauty of decentralised energy to every passer by.

But I'll also be taking this lesson: if you set the most absurdly optimistic aim (stopping the building of new coal plants in the UK, say, just when some of the world's biggest companies and the government's most powerful ministers are determined to build it) and pursue it with audacity, passion and insight, you sometimes succeed. And much more often than you might think.

Greenpeace - by which I mean the people who work in this office and other offices around the world; the people who help to win campaigns by supporting them financially; the people who give their time to volunteer on projects, fundraise, take action online or campaign on the streets; and the people who risk their jobs (and freedom) by taking direct action with us - has audacity, passion, insight and determination in spades.

It's been a privilege and a joy to be involved, and I feel horribly guilty to be leaving at a time when scientists say we have less than a hundred months to stop climate change, and when more than ever before we need all hands on deck. I plan to keep supporting Greenpeace in whatever way I can in the years to come.

For now though, farewell to the madhouse, and keep on working miracles.

I Count ends but the work goes on...

jossc — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 12:26:25 +0000

At the end of 2006 Greenpeace joined other environmental and campaigning groups to push for government action on climate change - under the name of the I Count campaign. At the time, the reality of global warming was only just being accepted by mainstream politicians, but through Stop Climate Chaos' I Count campaign thousands of us lobbied our MPs and helped to persuade many of them that the situation was serious and that genuine action was needed. Last month the positive results of all that effort were seen when a much beefed-up Climate Bill was passed by Parliament.

All of us who took part in I Count can be proud of our contribution to three major victories in the climate change debate, which have now been incorporated into the Bill.

A target of 80 per cent reduction in emissions by 2050
Yearly targets for emissions reductions
Aviation and shipping will now be included in the emissions targets

New climate change secretary Ed Miliband recognised the importance of the campaign and your support in his speech introducing the third reading of the Bill:

"I pay tribute to the scientists who detected the problem, the campaigners who fought to bring it to public attention, the green movement that mobilised for change, and above all, the members of the public who wrote to us in record numbers, asking for a Bill that met the scale of the challenge."

It was an important victory, and showed what can be achieved when campaigning groups focus on a common cause. I Count as such has now been retired, having achieved its objectives, but the work of the Stop Climate Chaos Coalition continues. Next up? Well that would be pushing to make UK energy policy clean and green, and campaigning for a global climate deal (at next year's vital Copenhagen summit) that will protect the world's most vulnerable people and ecosystems.

So (as you already knew) there's still a lot of work to be done. We'll need to keep the heat on government by continuing to campaign for clean green renewable energy. The more of us that make the demand, the bigger the impact we'll have.

So please visit Stop Climate Chaos again soon (after giving yourself a pat on the back and taking at least five minutes off for a quick breather) and see how you can help with the next phase of the campaign. Your I Count login will still work (that's assuming you can remember it) and the SCC team are currently working hard to build more cool and useful tools for you to use.

In the meantime, here's a date for your diaries; at 12 noon on Saturday 6th December 2008, the National Climate March will leave from Speaker's Corner, Hyde Park and march through to Parliament Square (map). Come along if you can and help keep up the pressure to Stop Climate Chaos.

Help us put whaling on trial in Japan

jossc — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 17:09:04 +0000

The whalers' factory ship Nisshin Maru leaving Innoshima on Monday

Japan's whaling fleet slunk out of port earlier this week under a cloud of financial crisis and scandal, with none of the elaborate parades and marching bands of previous years' departures. This time the Nisshin Maru left the port of Innoshima with no triumphant fanfare, after the cancellation of the usual traditional departure ceremony in its home port of Shimonoseki. Word has it that this time, only a small group of 30 or so saw the whalers off - along with a hardy bunch of activists who protested with banner saying "whaling on trial" and one highlighting the whaling operation’s multi-million dollar drain on Japan’s taxpayers.

The past few weeks have not been good ones for the whalers - first of all was the deflagging of the support ship Oriental Bluebird. Japanese newspapers reported that, for the first time since the nation began 'scientific' whaling in the 1980s, the self-appointed quota would be decreased. Then we heard of the announced closure of Yushin (Toyko's largest whale meat shop), and news that for the first time, the whaling ships wouldn't be 100 per cent crewed: many former crew members were reluctant to sail again, following the whale meat scandal uncovered by a Greenpeace undercover investigation.

The best evidence that our work is having a real impact on Japan's whaling programme is the effort they've put into striking back through the arrest and trial of the Tokyo 2, Junichi Sato and Toru Suzuki, for their roles in exposing of the whale meat scandal earlier this year. They've been charged with stealing the very whale meat they delivered to the public prosecutor as evidence, and face up to ten years in prison. The police raided our offices, seizing supporter data, documents, and computer disks, and the local authorities are threatening Greenpeace Japan with closure.

Grab the code and put this banner on your blog or website

But Greenpeace has a proud history of confronting problems directly, which is precisely why we are focussing the whaling campaign to Japan, where ultimately the decisions on the future of whaling are being made. So we’ll keep on raising the whaling issue at the highest level, and continue to mobilise the majority of the Japanese public (who don’t support whaling in the Southern Ocean) to recognise that their government's whaling programme is a corrupt misuse of public money. The obvious disarray within the whaling industry and the extreme overreaction by the authorities towards Junichi and Toru indicates that we are successfully pulling the rug out from under the whaling industry's feet. It's the beginning of the end for whaling in Japan and it's time for Japanese taxpayers to demand that their government stop subsidising this bankrupt programme, and order the fleet home.

Support the Tokyo Two

Junichi and Toru will be on trial at least until February of 2009. Funnily enough, the whaling fleet will be whaling until that time as well. Help us recruit more people to stand in solidarity with them by putting the banner at left on your blog or website. It will not only keep track of how much the whaling expedition is costing the Japanese taxpayer on a daily basis, but it calculates how long Junichi and Toru have been without their liberty, and how many of you have signed up as fellow criminal collaborators. Links to more information and action included, of course.

Read a recent interview with Toru and Junichi »

Links for 2008-11-19 [del.icio.us]

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0600

Ian McEwan on what Obama's election means for the environment ...
After years of living in fear of climate change, we are fast acquiring the weapons to defeat it. But the only one who can unite humanity for this life-or-death struggle is Barack Obama - and he must act now.

A fishy 'heads up' to France over tuna

jossc — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 15:11:10 +0000

OK so I'm a day or two off the pace with this story (courtesy of a long weekend - well even we need a day or two off once in a while), and didn't find out about Monday's tuna direct action in Paris until I showed up at the office again today. So what did I miss? Well, our French colleagues took the opportunity to protest against France's leading role in decimating Mediterranean bluefin tuna stocks by dumping five tonnes of tuna fish heads outside the door of the French Fisheries Ministry.

Timed to coincide with coincide with the opening of the annual meeting of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), in Marrakech, the action targetted France (as opposed to Italy or Spain, the two other worst offenders) in this instance because French Premier Nicholas Sarkozy currently holds the EU presidency. He has been using it to shape the EU position in favour of the short-term interests of his fishing industry above the need to save the Mediterranean bluefin tuna stock from collapse.

And the fact that it is on the verge of collapse is beyond dispute; ICCAT's scientific committee, the body charged with regulating tuna fishing in the Med, has been recommending for years that tuna quotas are set too high. In 2007 they set a sustainable level at 15,000 tonnes, but this was raised to close to 30,000 tonnes to pacify French, Spanish and Italian tuna fishermen. That would be bad enough, but it's not the whole story because the actual capacity of the combined fleets is something over 60,000 tonnes, and the regulatory regime is so slack that ICCAT's scientists themselves estimate that the amount of bluefin actually being caught is closer to this figure.

An article in The Economist this week quotes Raül Romeva, a green MEP from Spain, as saying that the EU Community Fisheries Control Agency's report on the state of the Mediterranean bluefin fishery has been sanitised and suppressed, because its contents are so embarrassing.

Unless serious steps are taken at this week's meeting, those countries who are members to ICCAT will bear the blame for managing the collapse of one of the most important and profitable fisheries of our time, and the destruction of a way of life for the fishermen of the region. To put this into a wider international context, even major Japanese companies are now recognising that the situation cannot go on - the giant Mitsubishi Corporation, the largest tuna importer into Japan (with about 40 per cent of the market) recently issued a revised statement on its sourcing policy saying that it "supports lower quotas, shorter seasons, an increase in minimum size of tuna that can be fished, and the protection of tuna spawning grounds…"

Close the fishery now

So what can ICCAT do? Well, the only hope is to close the bluefin fishery immediately and keep it closed until:

Marine reserves have been established to protect all tuna species' spawning grounds;
Fishing capacity has decreased to sustainable levels;
A new management plan in strict compliance with the scientific advice has been adopted and is being properly enforced.

Sadly, although its scientists recognise the impending disaster which is staring them in the face, ICCAT is ultimately a political organisation, and so far the politicians continue to run scared of the short-term demands of their powerful fishing industries. Quelle surprise, as M Sarkozy might say.

Take action

Call for the closure of the bluefin tuna industry now - before it closes itself by collapsing »

More about the UK Bluefin campaign »

Links for 2008-11-18 [del.icio.us]

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0600

Ministers warned that legal challenges could delay plans for nuclear power stations

First certified palm oil shipment just a bit of public relations lubrication?

tracy — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 12:22:39 +0000

This is part of Lake Suwakai, Runtu, where United Plantation's contractor constructed a road and stacked wood debris in the lake, presumably when the tidal lake was at its lowest. © Greenpeace

The first shipment of certified sustainable palm oil is due to arrive in Rotterdam any day now for a company called United Plantations. But our investigations on the ground in Indonesia reveal that Universal Plantations' operations are far from sustainable. In fact, they fail to meet the already inadequate criteria established by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO - its a bit of a mouthful), and the certification, in this instance, looks like little more than a bit of marketing lubrication for the industry.

We've been pushing the RSPO for some time now to implement its currently weak standards and to make standards tougher moving forward - not least by ensuring that its members stop clearing vast areas of forest and peatland. For example, the criteria of this voluntary initiative is weak at preventing the development of plantations on peatlands even though these same peatlands are one of the largest carbon stores on earth and their protection is crucial in the fight against climate change.

In August, United Plantations was the first company to be certified by the RSPO. While the certification only applies to their Malaysian operations, all of their operations, including those in Indonesia need to meet certain minimum standards, through the so called 'partial certification' process. Environmental groups pushed for this condition so that big companies couldn't certify a showcase plantation to woo buyers, while trashing forests and peatlands on their other lands.

And lo and behold, our investigation team discovered United Plantations doesn't comply with the key standards around partial certification on its Indonesian estates. Our evidence shows that the company is embroiled in illegal practices, including deep peat conversion and land disputes to name but a few issues.

You can read our full 12-page report here (pdf), but I've summarised the highlights for you below to give you an idea how much further we have to go to get sustainable palm oil - and why we are calling on the RSPO to support a moratorium on forest and peatland clearing.

Failed - compliance with local law

Our field investigations found that a subsidiary of United Plantations has been clearing peatlands, including some as deep as three metres in Runtu village. Indonesian law doesn't allow development or degradation of peatland any deeper than two metres. Operations have also failed to respect conservation areas around lakes and additionally there are irregularities in their planning permits and documentation.

Failed - mutually agreed resolutions where land disputes exist

Four community members from Runtu village in Kalimantan have been jailed allegedly for their opposition to land clearing activities by a United Plantations subsidiary. The RSPO rules for partial certification require that a mutually agreed resolution takes place when such disputes happen - their imprisonment indisputably shows that significant land conflicts still exist in palm oil concessions owned by United Plantations.

Failed - speedy plan for full certification

The RSPO requires companies that go for partial certification to have in place an "adequately ambitious and realistic" plan for certification of all their operations. While other companies such as New Britain Palm Oil have committed to achieving full certification in one to three years, United Plantations are working towards much longer timelines.

All in all it's not a good start for certified palm oil. The case shows that there are fundamental flaws within the RSPO if certified members are failing to comply with the minimum standards, and certifiers are missing key issues like land conflict and breaches of Indonesian law.

Moreover, all members of the RSPO - certified or not - should not be allowed to keep clearing forests and peatlands. The RSPO's going to have to take a tougher line if it wants to save the forests, the climate and its reputation.

Links for 2008-11-17 [del.icio.us]

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0600

All aboard the green revolution
Storage fears over high-level nuclear waste
Government plans for a new generation of nuclear power plants face growing concerns the industry needs another waste repository involving a massive escalation in cost.

Leaked legal documents say the government is open to challenges over new nuclear power

niall — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 22:29:33 +0000

The government would have you believe that all is well in the world of nuclear power. That the path to building more of them in the UK is smooth and care-free.

It isn't. We know this because we're keeping a keen eye on the whole process. A very keen eye. And Greenpeace investigations have exposed that the path is not as smooth as the government will have you believe.

Legal advice from top lawyers says that the government's nuclear plans are open to a number of challenges, on a number of fronts, over a number of years.

The document mentions several times a "risk of legal challenge". There are, it makes clear, "several routes of challenge". Until at least 2012. For example, the government "will face further legal challenge which is capable of knocking back the programme by a year or more, if it continues to give the impression that the process is a foregone conclusion."

Or, "particularly if the target local communities show themselves as concerned at the prospect."

The legal advice also identified that the "environmental assessment is potentially a source of delay and challenge". And, they concluded, "it remains to be seen whether the new system will be able to deliver in a sensitive and transparent way which is satisfactory without delay from the courts or electoral upset."

Thanks to the lawyers for the advice.

Sjoerd Jongens 1950-2008

bex — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 17:02:00 +0000

If you've visited a Greenpeace website, or have received an email from a Greenpeace email address, you have a man called Sjoerd Jongens to thank for laying the foundations. He built the networks connecting Greenpeace offices and people, as well as helping Greenpeace to win campaigns in Antarctica and around the world.

Sjeord died in a bicycle accident on his way to work at Greenpeace International in Amsterdam last week. Brian pays tribute on Making Waves:

Sjoerd foresaw that a new thing called 'the internet' might be something we'd want to use in future, and he started a gopher, WAIS, and FTP server back in the late 80s. He registered the domain www.greenpeace.org and put our first website up in 1992, serving as the organisation's first webmaster...

He was possibly the grumpiest support person in the history of IT support. And yet he was beloved by everyone who caught a glimpse of the heart behind the gruffness. His managers, myself among them, quickly learned to keep him close to the computers, far from the staff. Mike Townsley once approached him to say he was having trouble with his laptop. "No, Mike. I suspect we'll find that your laptop is actually having trouble with you," was the unironic response.

But those who saw him at sea or in Antarctica saw a different Sjoerd...

Read Brian's tribute on Making Waves.

Rainbow Warrior impounded; 90 arrested

bex — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 10:19:50 +0000

Two Greenpeace ships - one of them the Rainbow Warrior - have been impounded and their captains and 90 others arrested after three days of nonviolent direct actions in the Netherlands.

Some of the 100 volunteers occupying the construction site of a new E.on coal plant in Rotterdam.

I'll start at the beginning. On Friday evening, nearly 100 Greenpeace volunteers pitched tents next to the construction site of a new E.on coal plant in Rotterdam (one of eight E.on plans to build in Europe), to bear witness to the unfolding climate disaster.

At first light on Saturday, they moved onto the site and occupied it, stopping construction for 10 hours before all being arrested.

The nearby Rainbow Warrior, supporting the direct action, was boarded by police on Saturday night - and then again on Sunday afternoon - before going on to block Rotterdam harbour and stop coal ships from entering it along with another of our ships, Beluga II.

Yesterday evening, the police aggressively took control of the Warrior, forcing the captain to leave the coal port. Beluga II maintained her position to continue blockading the coal port for a while.

Both the Rainbow Warrior and Beluga II have now been impounded, and both captains (including Mike Finken who you may remember from the recent Give Coal the Boot tour in the UK) have been taken for police questioning. As our international website says: "If only the Dutch government would deal with climate change so aggressively."

More as it happens - and keep up with the latest on our international website.

Dinner date with destiny

John Sauven — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 19:40:39 +0000

The climate crunch will soon make the credit crunch look trivial, and the G20 summit must tackle it now, writes Greenpeace UK Executive Director John Sauven writes for Comment is free.

This evening, 20 world leaders will gather in Washington, where they will dine at the table of their host, George W Bush, before attempting to perform life-saving surgery on the global economy.

Even in the face of the extraordinary repudiation delivered last week by the American people, Bush is unlikely to use the summit to also reshape the world's response to climate change. But that's exactly what his 19 guests should do.

As the world economy lies on the operating table and the doctors - Sarkozy, Brown et al - gather around, where should they make the first cut? For proponents of a Green New Deal, the answer is simple: we need a shared vision for low-carbon prosperity, not an unstrategic spending splurge and the risk of worse to come because of climate change.

The economic crash and the climate crunch must be viewed as one problem. Lord Stern, former chief economist for the World Bank and author of the 2006 Stern Review on the economics of climate change, observes that the current global economic crisis and climate change share two fundamental elements: both have been years in the making and the world's poorest countries will suffer disproportionately.

He concludes that the longer we delay strong action on global warming, the worse the social and economic consequences will be. Current estimates of the costs are about 2 per cent of GDP per year if immediate action is taken. A 10-year delay could double the annual costs, with the bill eventually coming in at 20 per cent of GDP if no action is taken.

The global economic system is undeniably in intensive care. Seemingly rock-solid financial institutions have either collapsed or have required massive injections of government and taxpayer money. The failed economic system depends on a high-carbon, energy-hungry model. Merely keeping this system on life support before resuscitating it is a recipe for disaster. The expansion or renewal of high-carbon infrastructure in developed countries - building new coal-fired power stations and runways - will make it virtually impossible for us to perform the necessary decarbonising surgery on our economy in the coming years and decades.

Without such an operation - one that cuts out unabated fossil-fuel electricity production and slashes CO2 emissions from heating and transport - carbon emissions will not fall fast enough to stabilise the climate. Without those huge reductions, growing climate instability threatens to create huge social and economic instability and political conflict. As Lord Stern dryly notes, high-carbon growth will choke off growth. Current uncertainties in global credit, equity and commodity markets are no excuse for inaction on climate change.

The situation we find ourselves in is an opportunity for the developed world, economies in transition, and poorer countries alike to change course fundamentally. Short-term economic security must not be bought at the cost of the climate. The future lies in building low-carbon prosperity.

According to the International Energy Agency, investment in world energy infrastructure over the next 20 years will average approximately $1tn a year. It is only possible to spend this money once; it is crucial that this investment is in low-carbon technology.

The Washington meeting can start by delivering a global recovery plan founded on long-term investment in our energy sector. Priorities include energy efficiency, energy infrastructure (notably regional or "decentralised" energy systems where energy is generated close to point of use) and renewable energy technologies. As well as protecting us from future crises through tackling climate change, such a recovery plan would deliver jobs, reduced reliance on fossil fuels and lower bills through energy efficiency.

While the bulk of the economic activity will take place in the private sector, the leverage of public sector investment in setting the trajectory of that investment must not be underestimated. This kind of investment can only take place in a relatively secure political and regulatory climate, with clear objectives and incentives to reduce emissions dramatically by 2020 and for virtual decarbonisation by 2050. By contrast, high-carbon investment in industries such as unabated coal need to be exposed to their true economic liabilities. The cost to the planet of emissions from a single UK coal-fired power station amounts to around $400m a year. Let the owners of those plants pay the true cost of its operation, and then let's see if they continue to push for new unabated plants.

As President-elect Barack Obama has said of the climate crisis, "It is absolutely critical that we understand this is not just a challenge, it's an opportunity. It can be an engine that drives us into the future the same way the computer was the engine for economic growth over the last couple of decades."

Launching Greenpeace Africa

bex — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 17:28:25 +0000

"While the environmental threats facing Africans are urgent and critical, Africa is in a position to leapfrog dirty development and become a leader in helping to avert catastrophic climate change and protect the natural environment. We are here to help make that happen."

Amadou Kanoute, Executive Director of Greenpeace Africa.

Greenpeace Africa is here! Marking a whole new era for Greenpeace, we opened our first African office yesterday, in Johannesburg. In the coming weeks, we'll be opening two more - one in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the other in Senegal.

Although we've been working in Africa to end environmental destruction and for the right of Africans to a healthy environment since the early 1990s, the launch of Greenpeace Africa is a huge leap forward in our work to challenge some of the most urgent environmental problems facing Africans today - climate change, forest destruction and overfishing.

Explore our slideshow - or our brand new Greenpeace Africa website - to find out more:

Links for 2008-11-11 [del.icio.us]

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0600

Windfarm consortium to invest billions off UK coast
Two of the world's leading wind farm operators have teamed up to make joint bids for the next round of offshore licences in Britain.
Greenpeace's month in pictures - October
Video: how can you sleep?
Mystery of lost US nuclear bomb
The methane time bomb

Links for 2008-11-06 [del.icio.us]

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0600

Rainbow Warrior: through the porthole
MSN on the Rainbow Warrior

Links for 2008-11-04 [del.icio.us]

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0600

Time to bury the 'clean coal' myth
In the second of his Greenwash columns, Fred Pearce exposes how energy companies and governments are trying to rebrand coal as a clean fuel of the future despite the evidence
Obama's green jobs revolution
Democrat will lead effort to curb world's dependence on oil; Plans to create five million new posts in clean energy projects
U.S. court reinstates Bhopal water pollution case
A lawsuit contending that thousands of people in India were exposed to polluted drinking water after the 1984 Union Carbide toxic-gas disaster in Bhopal was reinstated on Monday by a U.S. appeals court, which said a lower court improperly threw out the case.

Links for 2008-10-17 [del.icio.us]

Sat, 18 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0500

In echo of Kingsnorth Six, US climate change activists go on trial over blockade of $1.8bn coal-fired power plant
Drinking water contaminated around Brazil’s Caetité uranium mine
Research conducted by Greenpeace has found high levels of uranium in drinking water in the area around the Caetité uranium mine in Brazil.